From Parents Against SSFL
Join us for a virtual screening of the Emmy-nominated documentary In the Dark of the Valley, for free, on http://www.NBC.com.
We’ll share our thoughts and comments via zoom during the screening and have a 30 minute Q&A directly after with people in the film.
From Ojai Valley News
July 12, 2024
A grassroots group is kicking off a campaign to urge four local governments to sue the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) over its failure to enforce cleanup agreements at a Simi Valley site contaminated in the 1940s and 1950s by thousands of rocket tests and nuclear-reactor experiments.
The campaign kickoff event is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, July 13, at Strathearn Historical Park, 37 Strathearn Place, Simi Valley.
The event kicks off 10 days of in-person actions at upcoming supervisor and city council meetings.
A partial nuclear meltdown occurred in 1959, leaving radioactive fallout at the site.
Despite cleanup agreements being in place with The Boeing Company (Boeing), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the state has failed to demand they clean up the contamination to the standard originally agreed upon.
“We are asking four local governments to join together and sue the state to litigate over the final Environmental Impact Report,” said Larry Yee, a resident of Ojai and former chair of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Yee said the group is asking the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and the cities of Los Angeles and Simi Valley to sue DTSC over the Environmental Impact Report recently issued for the site.
From Parents Against Santa Susana Field Laboratory
July 2024 Scheduled Actions
July 13: EVENT: SSFL Action Assembly, Strathearn Historical Ranch, Simi Valley
July 14: WATCH: In the Dark of the Valley Virtual Screening and QA Register
July 15: CALL: Elected representative phone banking
July 16: AMPLIFY: Reshare posts on social media & tag your representatives
July 17: EMAIL: Elected representative email banking
July 18: AMPLIFY: Share press stories with your networks
July 19: SIGN: Our open letter to local governments
July 20: AMPLIFY: Reshare posts on social media & tag your representatives
July 21: SIGN: Invite others to sign the www.Change.org/SantaSusana petition
July 22: CALL: Elected representatives
July 23: DEADLINE FOR BOARD OF SUPERVISORS TO FILE SUIT AGAINST DTSC
For more information: https://parentsagainstssfl.com/action-assembly
From Helen Caldicott M.D.
https://www.helencaldicott.com/
June 22, 2024
Because I was so worried about the ignorance of the world’s media and politicians about radiation biology after the dreadful accident at Fukushima in Japan, I organized a 2 day symposium at the NY Academy of Medicine on March 11 and 12, 2013, titled The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima. It was addressed by some of the world’s leading scientists, epidemiologist, physicists and physicians who presented their latest data and findings on Fukushima [i] I hoped to attract representatives of the global media to educate them.
Background
The Great Eastern earthquake and massive tsunami on the east coast of Japan, caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors within several days, and four hydrogen explosions in buildings 1,2, 3 and 4. Fukushima is now described as the greatest industrial accident in history. Massive quantities of radiation escaped into the air and water from these damaged reactors, three times more noble gases – argon, xenon and krypton than were released at Chernobyl, together with huge amounts of other radioactive elements, such as cesium, strontium, tritium, iodine, plutonium americium etc. Unfortunately the people of Japan were not notified of the meltdowns for 3 months because the government “did not want to create panic.”[ii]
A typical 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor contains as much radiation as that released by the explosions of 1000 Hiroshima sized bombs and the fissioned uranium becomes one billion times more radioactive than the original uranium because more than 200 intensely radioactive elements have been created whose half-lives range from seconds to millions of years. [iii]
So concerned was the Japanese government according to the then Prime Minister Naoto Kan, that they were considering plans to evacuate 35 million people from Tokyo, because other reactors including Fukushima Daiini on the east coast were also at risk.
Thousands of people fleeing from the smoldering reactors were not notified where the radioactive plumes were travelling despite the fact that the Japanese government and the US were tracking the radioactive plumes, so people fled directly into the path of the highest radiation concentrations where they were exposed to high levels of whole-body external gamma radiation being emitted by the radioactive elements inhaling radioactive air, and swallowing radioactive elements. Nor were these people supplied with inert potassium iodide which would have blocked the uptake of deadly radioactive iodine by their thyroid glands except in the town of Miharu. However prophylactic iodine was distributed to the staff of Fukushima Medical University in the days after the accident after extremely high levels of radioactive iodine – 1.9 million becquerels/kg were found in leafy vegetables near the University.[iv]This contamination was widespread in vegetables, fruit, meat, milk, rice and tea in many areas of Japan.[v]
The Fukushima meltdown disaster is not over and will never end. The radioactive fallout which remains toxic for hundreds to thousands of years covers large swathes of Japan will never be “cleaned up” and will contaminate food, humans and animals virtually forever. The three reactors which experienced total meltdowns I predict will never be dissembled or decommissioned and even TEPCO – Tokyo Electric Power Company – says it will take at least 30 to 40 years and the International Atomic Energy Agency predicts more than 40 years before they can make any progress because of the enormous levels of radiation at these damaged reactors.
Much of the temporary cooling systems cobbled together soon after the accident are composed of plastic piping held together with duct tape and several months ago the electricity supplying the pumps to circulate the water failed for 30 hours because a rat had eaten into the temporary electrical system putting the reactors and cooling pools at great risk as the water levels fell.
The fishing industry most likely will be destroyed on the east coast of Japan. The amount of radioactive water that has already been discharged into the Pacific is far greater than that released to the sea by Chernobyl. Fish caught out as far as 100 Km from Fukushima are radioactive and tuna caught off the coast of California are already contaminated by cesium 134 and 137 from Fukushima.[vi]In late June 2013 it was discovered that the levels of tritium in the Fukushima Port are the highest yet detected at 1,100 Becquerels per litre and this figure indicates huge quantities of radioactive water accompanied by many more dangerous radioactive elements are still escaping into the Pacific Ocean from leaking ground water and other sources.[vii]
Tritium is radioactive hydrogen H3 and there is no way to separate tritium from contaminated water. It is a soft beta emitter and a potent carcinogen with a half-life of 12.3 years and remains radioactive for more than 100 years. It concentrates in aquatic organisms including algae, seaweed, crustaceans and fish. Because it is tasteless, odorless and invisible, it will inevitably be ingested in food, including seafood for many decades. It combines in the DNA molecule – the gene – where it can induce mutations that later lead to cancer. It causes brain tumors, birth deformities, and cancers of many organs.
At the same time strontium 90, which induces bone cancer and leukemia has been detected in ground water near unit 2 at 30 times the so-called safety level. In other words there is no stability at the plant as huge quantities of radioactive elements, more than anyone has been able or willing to measure, have been continuously released into the air and water since the multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Complex.
This accident is enormous in its medical implications. It will induce an epidemic of cancer, as people inhale the radioactive elements, eat radioactive vegetables, rice, fish and meat, and drink radioactive milk and teas. In 1986, a single meltdown and explosion at Chernobyl covered 40% of the European land mass with radioactive elements. Already, according to a 2009 report published by the New York Academy of Sciences, over one million people have perished as a direct result of this catastrophe, yet this is just the tip of the iceberg because large parts of Europe and the food will remain radioactive for hundreds of years . [viii]
Medical Implications of Radiation
Fact number one
No dose of radiation is safe. Each dose received by the body is cumulative and adds to the risk of developing malignancy or genetic disease.
Fact number two
Children are ten to twenty times more vulnerable to the carcinogenic effects of radiation than adults. Girls are twice as sensitive as boys and women are more sensitive than men. Fetuses are thousands of times more sensitive. Immuno-compromised patients are also extremely sensitive
Fact number three
Very high doses of radiation received from a nuclear meltdown or from a nuclear weapon explosion can cause acute radiation sickness, with alopecia, severe nausea and diarrhea and thrombocytopenia. Reports of such illnesses, particularly in children appeared within the first few months after the Fukushima accident.
Fact number four
As we all know, Ionizing radiation from radioactive elements, and radiation emitted from X ray machines and CT scanners, can be carcinogenic. The latent period of carcinogenesis for leukemia is 5-10 years and solid cancers 15-80 years. It has been shown that all modes of cancer can be induced by radiation, as well as over 2600 genetic diseases now described in the medical literature.
But as we increase the level of background radiation in our environment from medical procedures, X ray scanning machines at airports, or radioactive materials continually escaping from nuclear reactors and nuclear waste dumps, we will inevitably increase the incidence of cancer as well as the incidence of genetic disease in future generations.
Types of ionizing radiation
1. X rays (usually electrically generated), are electromagnetic, and only cause mutations the instant they pass through your body. You do not become radioactive but your genes may be mutated.
2. Similarly gamma radiation, is electromagnetic, emitted by radioactive materials generated in nuclear reactors and from some naturally occurring radioactive elements in the soil.
3. Alpha radiation, which is particulate, and composed of 2 protons and 2 neutrons, emitted from uranium atoms and from other dangerous elements generated in reactors (such as plutonium, americium, curium, einsteinium, etc- all known as alpha emitters and have an atomic weight greater than uranium). Alpha particles travel a very short distance in the human body. They cannot penetrate the layers of dead skin in the epidermis to damage living skin cells. But when these radioactive elements enter the lung, liver, bone or other organs, they transfer a large dose of radiation over a long period of time to a very small volume of cells. Most of these cells are killed, but some on the edge of the tiny radiation field remain viable to be mutated, and cancer may later develop. Alpha emitters are among the most carcinogenic materials known.
4. Beta radiation, like alpha also particulate, is a charged electron emitted from radioactive elements such as strontium 90, cesium 137, iodine 131 etc. The beta particle is light in mass, it travels further than an alpha particle but also, mutates genes.
5. Neutron radiation is released during the fission process in a reactor or a bomb. Reactor #1 at Fukushima has been periodically emitting neutron radiation as sections of the molten core become intermittently critical. Neutrons are large radioactive particles that travel many kilometers, and they pass through everything including concrete, steel etc. There is no way to hide from them and they are extremely mutagenic.
So, let’s describe just four of the radioactive elements that are continually being released into the air and water at Fukushima. Remember, though, there are over 200 such elements each with its own characteristics and pathways in the food chain and the human body. They are invisible, tasteless and odorless. When the cancer manifests it is impossible to determine its aetiology, but there is a large literature proving that radiation causes cancer including the data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1. Cesium 137 is a beta and gamma emitter with a half-life of 30 years. That means in 30 years only half of its radioactive energy has decayed, so it is detectable as a radioactive hazard for over 300 years. Cesium, like all radioactive elements bio-concentrates in at each level of the food chain – from soil to grass, fruit and vegetables and tens to hundreds of times more in meat and milk andn the sea from algae to crustaceans to small fish to big fish.The human body stands atop the food chain. As an analogue of potassium, it becomes ubiquitous in all cells. It can induce brain cancer, rhabdomyosarcomas, ovarian or testicular cancer and, most importantly, genetic disease.
2. Strontium 90 is a high-energy beta emitter, half-life 28 years, detectably radioactive for 300 years. As a calcium analogue, it is a bone-seeker. It concentrates in the food chain, specifically milk (including breast milk), and is laid down in bones and teeth in the human body, where it can irradiate an osteoblast causing bone cancer; or a white blood cell inducing leukemia.
3. Radioactive iodine 131 is a beta and gamma emitter with a half-life of 8 days, hazardous for ten weeks. It bio-concentrates in the food chain, in vegetables and milk, and then the human thyroid gland where it is a potent carcinogen inducing thyroid disease and/or thyroid cancer. It is important to note that of 174,376 children under the age of 18 to have been examined by thyroid ultrasound in the Fukushima Prefecture, 12 have been definitively diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 15 more are suspected to have the disease. Almost 200,000 more children are yet to be examined. Of these 174,367 children 43.2% have either thyroid cysts and/or nodules.[ix]
Thyroid cancer is extremely rare in children- this is an extraordinary situation. In Chernobyl thyroid cancers were not diagnosed until 4 years post-accident. This early presentation indicates that these Japanese children almost certainly received a high dose of radioactive iodine but also points to the fact that high doses of other radioactive elements released during the meltdowns were received by the exposed population in Fukushima prefecture and elsewhere so the rate of cancer in Japan is almost certain to rise.
4. Plutonium, one of the most deadly, is an alpha emitter. So toxic that one millionth of a gram will induce cancer if inhaled into the lung. It is an iron analogue and combines with transferrin and it causes liver cancer, bone cancer, leukemia, or multiple myeloma. It concentrates in the testicles and ovaries where it can induce testicular or ovarian cancer, or genetic diseases in future generations. It also crosses the placenta where it is teratogenic like thalidomide, the morning sickness drug, did years ago. There are medical homes full of grossly deformed children near Chernobyl never before seen in the history of medicine.
The half-life of plutonium is 24,400 years, radioactive for 250,000 years, available to induce cancers, congenital deformities, and genetic diseases for virtually the rest of time.
Plutonium is also fuel for atomic bombs. 5 kilos is fuel for a weapon which would vaporize a city. Each reactor makes 250 Kg of plutonium a year. It is postulated that less than one kilo of plutonium, if adequately distributed, could kill induce lung cancer every person on earth.
Conclusion
In summary, the radioactive contamination and fallout from nuclear power plant accidents will have medical ramifications that will never cease because the food will continue to concentrate the radioactive elements for hundreds to thousands of years inducing epidemics of cancer, leukemia and genetic disease. Already we are seeing such pathology and abnormalities in birds and insects and because they reproduce very fast it is possible to observe disease caused by radiation over many generations within a relatively short space of time
Pioneering research conducted by Dr Tim Mousseau, an evolutionary biologist, in the exclusion zones of both Chernobyl and Fukushima has documented very high rates of tumors in birds, genetic mutations in birds and insects, many of the male barn swallows are sterile and many birds have smaller than normal brains. What happens to animals will happen to human beings.[x]
The effects of low‐dose radiation: Soviet science, the nuclear industry – and independence?
The Japanese government is desperately trying to “cleanup” radioactively contaminated soil, trees, leaves etc. But in reality all that can be done is collect it, place it in containers – the government contracted workers are using plastic bags, and transfer it to another location. It cannot be made neutral and it cannot be prevented from spreading in the future. Some contractors have allowed their workers to empty radioactive debris, soil and leaves into streams and other illegal places. Then the main question becomes – where to place the contaminated material stored safely away from the environment of thousands of years. There is no safe place in Japan for this to happen, let alone to store thousands of tons of high level radioactive waste which rests precariously at the 54 Japanese nuclear reactors.
Last but not least Australian uranium fueled the Fukushima reactors. Australia exports uranium for use in nuclear power plants to 12 countries including the US, Japan, France, Britain, Finland, Sweden, South Korea, China, Belgium, Spain, Canada and Taiwan. 270,000 metric tons of deadly radioactive waste exists in the world today with 12,000 metric tons being added yearly.
It must be isolated from the environment for one million years and no container lasts longer that 100 years. The isotopes will inevitably leak contaminating the food chain, inducing epidemics of cancer, leukemia, congenital deformities and genetic diseases for the rest of time.
This then is the legacy we leave to future generations
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[i] helencaldicottfoundation.org, The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima March 11 and 12
[ii] National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, July 2012
[iii] Chart of 211 Radioactive Poisons in 10-Year Old CANDU Spent Fuel
http://www.ccnr.org/hlw_chart.html#chart
[iv] http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/06/fukushima-medical-university.html.
[v]Tests Find Cesium 172 times the limit in Miyagi Yacon Tea, The Asahi Simbun April 13, 20012; Trust Deficit, The Worst Fallout of Fukushima, Suvendrini Kakuchi, Inter Press Service News Agency, July 17, 2013
[vi] www.abc.net.au/am/content/2013/s3750728.htm
[vii] http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2013/06/232195.html
[viii][viii] Chernobyl, Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Yablokov, Nesterenko and Nesterenko, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol 1181, 2009
[ix] http://fukushimavoice-eng2.blogspot.com/2013/06/11th-prefectural-oversight-committee.html
[x] The effects of low‐dose radiation: Soviet science, the nuclear industry – and independence?
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For more information: https://www.helencaldicott.com/
By Helen Caldicott M.D.
June 2024
In light of Peter Dutton’s enthusiastic endorsement of the latest nuclear reactors, it is pertinent to review this technology in depth.
There are three types of SMRs which generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity compared with current day 1000 megawatt reactors.
These SMRs will be expensive because the cost per unit capacity increases with decrease in reactor size. To alleviate costs, it is suggested that safety rules be relaxed, including reducing security requirements and a reduction in the 10 mile emergency planning zone to 1000 feet.
Non-light water designs
A reactor complex will consist of four HTGR modules located underground, and run by just two operators in a central control room.
Should temperatures unexpectedly exceed 1600 C the carbon coating will release dangerous radioactive isotopes into the helium gas, and at 2000C the carbon would ignite creating a fierce graphite Chernobyl-type fire.
Although HTGRs produce small amounts of low-level waste they create larger volumes of high-level waste than conventional large reactors.
Fueled by plutonium or highly enriched uranium, and cooled by either liquid sodium, or a lead-bismuth molten coolant. Liquid sodium burns or explodes when exposed to air or water and lead-bismuth is extremely corrosive producing very volatile radioactive elements when irradiated.
Should a crack occur in the reactor complex, liquid sodium escaping would burn or exploding. Without coolant, the plutonium fuel could reach critical mass, triggering a massive nuclear explosion scattering plutonium to the four winds. One millionth of a gram of plutonium induces cancer and it lasts for 500,000 years.
There are two types of fast reactors, a simple plutonium fueled reactor and a “breeder” in which the plutonium reactor core is surrounded by a blanket of uranium 238 which captures neutrons and converts to plutonium.
The plutonium fuel, obtained from spent reactor fuel currently in storage pools at large light water reactors, will be fissioned and converted to shorter lived isotopes – cesium and strontium which last 600 years instead of 500,000. Called “transmutation”, the industry claims that this is an excellent way to get rid of plutonium wastes – fallacious, because only 10% fissions leaving 90% of the plutonium intact.
Fast reactors require a massive infrastructure including a reprocessing plant to dissolve radioactive waste fuel rods in nitric acid, chemically removing the plutonium and a fuel fabrication facility to create new fuel rods. A total of 10,160 kilos of plutonium is required to operate a fuel cycle at a fast reactor and just 2.5 kilos is fuel for a nuclear weapon.
Fast reactors and breeders provide extraordinary long-term medical dangers and the perfect situation for nuclear weapons proliferation.
INTERNATIONAL URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL
LAS VEGAS
April 30 & May 1, 2024
3 pm to 10 pm
Free admission
The Beverly Theater
http://www.thebeverlytheater.com
For information:
https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/
https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/usacanada-2024-program
From TelevisionEvent.com with schedule of air times
https://televisionevent.com/
TELEVISION EVENT is an archive-based feature documentary that views the dramatic climax of the Cold War through the lens of a commercial television network, as it narrowly succeeds in producing the most watched, most controversial made-for-TV movie, THE DAY AFTER (1983).
With irreverent humor and sobering apocalyptic vision, this film reveals how a commercial broadcaster seized a moment of unprecedented television viewership, made an emotional connection with an audience of over 100 million and forced an urgent conversation with the US President on how to collectively confront and resolve the most pressing issue of the time – nuclear proliferation.
MY TEAM PRODUCED THIS FILM IN THE HOPES OF WAKING UP THE PUBLIC, SO WE DON’T SLEEPWALK INTO THE APOCALYPSE. THE DAY AFTER PROVED THAT, HOWEVER POLARIZED WE MAY BE IDEOLOGICALLY, WE CAN STILL COME TOGETHER, INFORM OURSELVES, AND ACT TO PREVENT THE OBSCENE DEVASTATION CAUSED BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS.” – DIRECTOR, JEFF DANIELS
Check website for schedule and watch on demand on Vimeo ($5).
From Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Energy in Space
October 31, 2023
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel speaks about local seafood inside commissary at Yokota Air Base, Japan [this base is contaminated with PFAS — see note below]
U.S. to feed troops Japanese seafood amid Fukushima radiation fears –Washington has agreed to help offset a Chinese ban on imports following Japan’s release of nuclear wastewater into the ocean
The U.S. government has agreed to buy Japanese seafood for its military to help mitigate the economic fallout from Japan’s decision to release radioactive wastewater from its destroyed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.
The American armed forces will sign a long-term contract with Japanese seafood suppliers to help counter China’s ban on imports from Japan, U.S. ambassador to Tokyo Rahm Emmanuel told the media on Monday.
“I’ve served the products to my own children; I continue to eat the products from the Fukushima area,” he said. “I’ve served the fish products to some of the highest elected officials in the United States government and armed forces, and we will continue to stand with our friends in Japan.”
Former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is among those who dined with Emanuel on Japanese seafood, the ambassador said.
He said the seafood deal begins with scallops from Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands, but eventually all types of fish will be sold in the commissaries at all 17 U.S. installations in Japan, at farmers markets on some U.S. bases and served on U.S. Navy ships.
This is how much the Biden administration loves our troops. Anything to keep Japan onside for the coming war with China.
https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2023/10/
Controversial Rahm Emanuel has been President Obama’s Chief of Staff, President Clinton’s Senior Advisor, and Mayor of Chicago.
PFAS Contamination at Yokata
Two wells near Yokata Air Base were tested and found to be severely contaminated with PFAS compounds. PFAS spills occurred there between 2010 and 2012, including one 800 gallon spill that seeped into the ground water., but the U.S. Air Force admits no responsibility. Hundreds of area residents have been tested and on average found to have above 20 parts per billion in their blood, “a level the American National Academies of Sciences says is dangerous and merits a barrage of clinical tests to diagnose expected diseases.”
PFAS results from mainland Japan, Pat Elder, November 30, 2023
https://www.militarypoisons.org/latest-news/pfas-results-from-mainland-japan
Vistra Energy is demolishing part of the former PG&E power plant at Moss Landing in Monterey County, California, and building a large lithium-ion battery storage facility there. According to very credible reports from people that worked for PG&E and GE, GE built a breeder nuclear reactor for PG&E at Moss Landing in the late 1960s. If true, that could pose significant radioactive contamination risks to demolition workers and the surrounding environment. Demolition must be immediately halted.
The public isn’t aware that a nuclear reactor of any type exists or existed at Moss Landing, but according to sources, GE nuclear power division in San Jose designed and built a breeder reactor for PG&E at Moss Landing in 1968, and it began operation in approximately 1969. It was a very expensive reactor, and it was not for power generation. It operated until the mid to late 1970s when it was shut down for unknown reasons. The control room, and possibly the reactor itself, were underneath the #6 or #7 535-foot smoke stacks. There was an access stairwell to the underground reactor control room, with a metal railing surround. After the reactor was shut down, the control room access was still visible.
A former worker at Moss Landing witnessed small planes periodically flying through the steam of the smoke stacks, presumably taking air samples. That person was told the smoke stack emissions were only steam, but any reactor emissions might have been vented out the tall stacks.
When a person who helped build the reactor later went to work for PG&E in the 1980s and inquired about the reactor and how it was functioning, PG&E employees told the person, “It doesn’t exist,” and “Shut the f*** up or you’re finding a new job”. That next weekend, PG&E filled in the access stairwell with concrete and cut off the metal railing at ground level.
One former employee went to Monterey County Planning Department to research if permits had been issued for the reactor and didn’t find any record of permits. In response to FOIA requests, the NRC also did not find any responsive records on the reactor, meaning they have no records or they have no records they will disclose to the public.
A breeder reactor is for the purpose of making plutonium for the military and for nuclear bombs. PG&E and GE operated a breeder reactor together at Vallecitos beginning in 1957. This type of reactor does not produce energy. One source suggested the Moss Landing reactor was to make off-the-books plutonium.
If the reactor existed, it was operated by PG&E at the same time as the company was operating the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant, called by Science Magazine “the dirtiest of the nation’s power reactors” [1]. It would have had the same safety problems, the same lack of AEC/NRC oversight, and potentially the same high radioactive emissions and contamination to the surrounding area. The area around the power plant and underground, including any control room and ground water, may be highly polluted with radioactive elements including hot particles and plutonium, considered by experts to be the deadliest of poisons, with no safe level of ingestion or inhalation. Contamination would pose hazards to local residents, to the waterways and ocean, to groundwater, to agricultural products, and to workers on the site.
State, federal, and local authorities have been notified of the situation including NRC, DOE, CDC ATSDR, California DTSC, CalEPA, CDPH, Monterey County EHIB, and the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, but to date, they have taken no known steps to investigate the situation or have refused to do so. Nuclear and environmental experts, civic groups, non-profit organizations, and other resources have also been informed about this situation,
Meanwhile, Vistra Energy continues demolishing equipment and buildings at the site.
Action steps needed now:
— Demolition work at Moss Landing by Vistra and other companies must be halted immediately due to the danger to workers and the surrounding environment from possible contaminated equipment and buried radioactive materials, pending an investigation.
— A thorough and public investigation must take place immediately into the complete history of PG&E’s uses and facilities at Moss Landing and the existence and extent of any radioactive contamination there.
— Removal and remediation of any and all contaminated soils and machinery, including excavation, must be undertaken by licensed professionals with full transparency. And any soil and debris already removed must be tracked and dump sites notified of its possible contamination.
— If radioactive gases were vented through the smoke stacks, their level of radioactive contamination must be assessed.
— The risk of fire and explosion of the lithium-ion batteries onsite adds another element of risk to any onsite radioactive contamination and potential dispersal offsite. This may necessitate the shut-down of the battery energy storage facilities until an investigation is completed.
[1] Reactor Emissions: AEC Guidelines Move Toward Critics’ Position, Science, June 18, 1971
For information on Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant:
My Humboldt Diary, by Bob Rowen
https://myhumboldtdiary.com/index.html
https://healfukushima.org/2023/01/25/former-humboldt-bay-nuclear-plant-technician-pgampes-safety-problems-and-retaliation/
Interview with Bob Rowen — video and transcript, January 26, 2015
https://healfukushima.org/2023/01/25/nuclear-accident-at-pgampes-humboldt-bay-nuclear-plant-whistleblower-presents-the-evidence/
Interview with Scott Rainsford — video and transcript, September 22, 2020
https://healfukushima.org/2023/02/15/pge-humboldt-nuclear-power-plant-accident-the-cover-up/
Second interview with Scott Rainsford – video and transcript, December 12, 2020
https://healfukushima.org/2023/01/25/humboldt-bay-problems-continue-pgampe-retaliates-against-decommissioning-expert/
Interview with Darrell Whitman, attorney and former Federal OSHA investigator, February 2015
Letter to Sen. Sam Blakeslee Regarding Diablo’s Recertification
by Cindy Sage
23 March 2011
I have some thoughts for you, as you go after Diablo’s recertification.
Let me tell you what it is like to fly from Singapore to Hong Kong to SF and back to SB in one day. Because of catastrophic radiation threats from ‘the safest nuclear reactors in the world’ in Japan.
Our daughter, her husband and 22-month old evacuated from Tokyo last Tuesday to Singapore via Osaka and Shanghai. They’ve lived in Tokyo for two years, and the baby was born there.
I flew to Singapore for a week to help them.
These are thoughts now, about California, coming back home. Flying back over the green hills of SLO and SB counties from San Francisco, you think “we don’t even have 160 miles between us and Diablo”. That is the distance between Tokyo and Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear plant that now has four reactors in partial meltdown and thousands of spent fuel rods in empty cooling ponds seeping and belching radiation directly into the air and the seawater. The government acknowledges this will likely continue for weeks and months to come. And, the threat of full meltdown of one, or more, of these four reactors and/or the cooling ponds for spent fuel is not ruled out yet.
Tokyo has thirty million people in one city alone that cannot be moved, or properly informed because they will panic and bring further chaos to an overloaded government.
One hundred and sixty miles away is less than one day’s airflow up the SLO and Santa Ynez valleys to major population areas.
Remember the SB fires? Burning upslope and inland by day, and back downslope at night, carrying fire, smoke and ash in an endless zig-zag pattern? Remember only the rain could really stop the fires? In Tokyo, the rain will bring down the radioactivity. During the Gap fire, we sat at Playa Azul at an outdoor table, and the ash fall was so thick it coated the food and floated black in the margaritas. We had to leave the food on the table and go because we couldn’t breathe and couldn’t eat it.
For a week, people in Tokyo prayed that 160 miles was far enough away. Heck, its the distance from Bakersfield to LA, right? I heard that from seriously smart, educated Americans, waiting it out. But events have to unfold, and the chaos involved and unnecessary anguish are heartbreaking for the families. The slow leakage of information that prevents stampeding and improves the government’s ability to control events also sacrifices many in the process.
“Our expectations had a scientific basis, but conditions were exceeded.” VP of TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power Company, March 23rd, CNN interview.
Based on the now-demonstrated failure of at least four of Japan’s nuclear reactors to withstand ‘design’ events that were calculated on the basis of only one catastrophic failure at a time, we know this kind of thinking is outdated and monumentally risky for California as well. Japan planned for earthquakes, but not multiple, cascading events that ran out of control, prevented planned emergency responses, and caused them to throw away the rule-book in favor of ‘hail mary’ passes like flooding with seawater, one helicopter squirt at a time. Japan’s TEPCO didn’t even realize for a week that they had cooling ponds running dry that held thousands of leaking radioactive spent fuel rods. Because they couldn’t even get into or close to their own plants to survey the damage.
Not until the effort was militarized, and people could be ordered to go into the hot zone did we begin to see the damage, and understand the colossal breaches of containment and destroyed plants and cooling equipment. That is not in the rule-book. They had no response. Now, Daiichi’s reactor 3 in chronic, uncontrollable release-mode, and it contains plutonium as well as radioactive cesium and iodine. The other three reactors are in partial meltdown, and even government press releases say they cannot rule out complete meltdowns as yet.
Japan continues to deal with the aftermath – major aftershocks, continuing loss of power, loss of back-up power, loss of triple-backup power, fires, radioactive meltdown and seepage, intentional steam releases of radioactive materials directly into the air to prevent catastrophic hydrogen buildup, inadvertent radiation releases from explosions that happen on a regular basis anyway, the spreading plume, the hopeful weather patterns carrying the radiation ‘somewhere else’, the inevitable recirculation of radiation back over Tokyo and central Japan, the lack of equipment to properly test air, water, food and the people evacuating the hot zones.
What pieces of information are reliable? What is the subtext of unfolding US Embassy and State Dept and military advisories? What ‘indicators’ do you hold out as the trigger for “what to do next”? Do you wait until the US government moves the USS George Washington aircraft carrier out of Yokohama as happened Monday, because it is SOUTH of Tokyo? Is that a bad sign? Do you wait for the US State Department to issue potassium iodide pills to all employees and their dependents as happened Monday? Or, the radiation is twice the infant limit in Tokyo groundwater as happened Tuesday? If you wait, will the trains and planes be full, and ticket prices quadruple normal fares – effectively prohibiting travel for families with kids? What can you believe? What is hype or spin? What does it mean when the evacuation zones seem to be based more on what the government can handle sheltering people, rather than what the radiation levels should be dictating? You can’t effectively evacuate 30 million people all at once, even if the exposures are extreme and otherwise dictate that it should be done immediately.
Getting, judging, and reacting to incomplete, conflicting and incomprehensible information is an impossible task for people in a crisis, who are also dealing with emergency flights, emergency housing, trains that don’t run, sick babies, traveling spouses, planes that are full, empty store shelves, bank accounts that cannot be accessed due to power outages, overloaded telecom systems that don’t work, aftershocks, grief, fear, passports that can’t be located, cell phones that are cancelled or don’t work in other countries, missed connections in foreign airports where there are no diapers, no food, no sleep, no information, wondering if/when people will not be allowed to fly if they test positive for radiation contamination. When is it too late to evacuate? IF you go back, can you get out again?
People with means and money have nearly insurmountable difficulties. People without means and money simply pray and go into deep denial. They are publicly praised by the government for their fortitude, while they can do nothing but await their fate with stoicism.
A week ago, military dependents and ex-pats in Tokyo working for US, German, French, Spanish and other international corporations were formally advised by their employers it would be prudent to evacuate Tokyo. But, there was no health threat. WHO said so.
Ticket prices skyrocketed in Asian countries. Booking evacuation flights and trains became very difficult to impossible. Families split up. Serviced hotel and apartment units in Hong Kong, Singapore and other flee-zones were snapped up by corporations for evacuated ex-pat families…. the one we stayed in went to 97% occupancy in a week.
These families are now trying to figure out if/when they can return. Hour by hour, day by day, parsing the messages in the media coverage. I did this yesterday. And, all last week. I’m still doing it this morning, by skype. Only uncertainty is certain.
Lessons learned? What I can tell you is that I think Diablo should be shut down now. Period. Taken off-line. The Hosgri fault, and perhaps other unrecognized faults, and the likelihood (not just the remote potential) for major earthquakes, tsunami, loss of cooling systems, and proximity to major population zones are clear indicators now that this plant should be mothballed.
The clear underestimation of design earthquake in the original Diablo design, and the failure to anticipate and provide credible protection against predictable, multiple, cascading natural disasters is basis enough not to recertify, and to take it off-line now. Germany is taking some of its older reactors off-line. Why not California?
We don’t get 30% of our power from nuclear in California. We have other options. Japan does not, so they have to accept rolling blackouts for the foreseeable future. They have to accept the long-term consequences including loss of transportation and public services infrastructure, food and water shortages due to radiation contamination, loss of industrial output, loss of communications, banking, and other vital services, contamination of beef and dairy herds and row crops, and embargos and bans by other countries on the import of leafy green vegetables and dairy products from Japan.
Try that on central coast farmers, ranchers, viticulturists and other growers in the agricultural industry.
Talk to Bakersfield, Fresno and the central Valley growers, too, because they’ll be in the hot zone as well.
Japan doesn’t even have enough meters to measure the safety of food and water. Most people shop everyday for foodstuffs and walk to get there. They have to go outside to live. To re-supply their tiny refrigerators.
When summer comes, can you imagine being inside with your kids, unable to turn on the air conditioning or get fresh air because of radiation contamination? Imagine this in 86 degree weather with 90% humidity?
That is best case, and assumes there is enough power for any air conditioning at all.
PG&E has a similar history of malfeasance and misleading regulators and the public as does TEPCO. The parallels are clear – both utilities have demonstrated failures in maintaining critical infrastructure, conducting required safety tests, and providing honest and timely information to regulators and the public about risks to health and safety. The time for wishful thinking is over.
Sam, you have no idea how comforting it is to know you’ve got the scientific and geotechnical background AND the political position to make this issue a front-burner.
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Published in the SLO Coast Journal, April 2011
Cindy Sage is an owner of Sage Associates, an environmental consulting firm located in Santa Barbara, California. She is a Research Fellow at Orebro University’s School of Health and Medical Sciences, Department of Oncology, Orebro, Sweden (2008-2010) and Guest Lecturer (2011). Her journal publications appear in Bioelectromagnetics, Biomedicine and Pharmacology, and Reviews on Environmental Health. Her articles have appeared in San Francisco Medicine, the Real Estate Law Journal, Electricity Journal. the German journal Environment•Medicine•Society, the Land Use and Environment Forum of the California Continuing Education of the Bar and has she authored numerous articles on EMF policy and public health issues in contemporary print media. She is an author of the Seletun Scientific Statement (2010), Seletun, Norway. Sage Associates has conducted more than 1000 professional studies since 1982 on projects involving electromagnetic fields (both ELF and RF). Invited presentations have been made in London, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Canada and the United States and include: the Emergency Conference on the Adequacy of the ICNIRP Public Safety Limits (hosted by Coghill Labs at the Royal Society of London, 2007); the London International Leukemia Conference (2004), conference presentations at the Bioelectromagnetics Society annual meetings (1991 – 2006), the First World Congress on Breast Cancer in Kingston, Ontario, Canada (1997), Witness at the International Hearing and contributor to the Global Action Plan for Breast Cancer (1997), presenter at the Etiology Working Group, National Action Plan for Breast Cancer at the Workshop on Electromagnetic Fields, Light-at-night and Breast Cancer Washington DC (1997), and the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund Environmental Policy Summit in Washington, DC (1998). She is a full Member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society. Ms. Sage is a founder of the BioInitiative Working Group (2006) and co-editor of the BioInitiative Report; A Rationale for a Biologically-based Public Exposure Standard for Electromagnetic Fields (2007). She is co-chair of the Collaborative for Health and the Environment EMF Working Group.
From Los Alamos Study Group
Thursday, November 16, 2023
6-8 PM Mountain Time
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
107 W. Barcelona Road
Santa Fe, New Mexico
In-person and webcast
Panel discussion on the Congressional Nuclear Strategy Commission’s proposed crash program to increase U.S. nuclear weapons production, deployment, and spending by 2035, along with rapid qualitative and quantitative increases in other strategic weapons.
Speakers:
Peter Kuznick
Steven Starr
Greg Mello
Register for webcast:
To join the meeting by Zoom, register in advance at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcemgpzIrH9GVf3g3ImNz1s8m1W6ilRoV.
Bulletin 333:
In late 2010, President Obama agreed to a wide-ranging plan to modernize the entire nuclear weapons establishment in negotiations with Senate Republicans over the ratification of New START. That plan involved the serial modernization or replacement of every single U.S. nuclear warhead factory, warhead, and delivery system. Since 2010 this plan has gradually evolved and expanded, and of course it has also greatly increased in cost.
Now, a radical increase in scale and pace of modernization, along with an increase in the size of nuclear forces, is being proposed by an influential bipartisan group appointed by Congress, as laid out in the The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Oct 2023). It was recently presented to the Senate (video 1) to general acclaim (“Bi-partisan support for strategic posture report in Senate Armed Services Committee hearing,” Exchange Monitor, Oct 19, 2023).
This report makes the claim that unless the U.S. greatly increases its nuclear weapons efforts along with other strategic system acquisitions over the 2027-2035 period, “deterrence” vis-a-vis Russia and China will be lost.
As regular readers of these Bulletins will know, that happens to be the period of time in which Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is expected to make all the new plutonium warhead cores (“pits”) for what these authors hope will be an expanding U.S. nuclear arsenal. Absent new pits from LANL, no altogether new warheads will be possible.
This Thursday, November 16, from 6-8 pm, we will host a nationally-webcast, panel and audience discussion of this new strategic proposal at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Santa Fe, at 107 W. Barcelona Road (map). Panelists will include Peter Kuznick, who will speak on how this plan is being received internationally, Steven Starr, and myself. If you are local, please come in person if you can.
To join the meeting by Zoom, register in advance at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcemgpzIrH9GVf3g3ImNz1s8m1W6ilRoV. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
…Many of you may be interested in this recent expose (with which we had a lot to do): “Chess, cards and catnaps in the heart of America’s nuclear weapons complex, Searchlight New Mexico, Nov 8, 2023).
https://lasg.org/ActionAlerts/2023/Bulletin333.html
1 armed-services.senate(dot)gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-findings-of-the-congressional-commission-on-the-strategic-posture-of-the-united-states
Heal Fukushima 